A day to play on O'ahu, alone with a car.

By Richard A. Marini :
August 21, 2014

The 4,000-acre Kualoa Ranch on the North Shore of O'ahu offers plenty for adventuresome visitors, including all-terrain vehicle trips and horseback tours.

Photo By Photos by Richard A. Marini / San Antonio Express-News

Lush tropical vegetation stands out against a mountain backdrop on O'ahu's North Shore. The area offers an abundance of activities.

Visitors can easily find the outdoor grill at Ray's Kiawe Broiled Chicken stand in Haleiwa. All they need do is follow their nose.

More Information

If you go

Oahu: http://www.gohawaii.com/oahu

The Modern Honolulu hotel: www.themodernhonolulu.com

Kualoa Ranch: www.kualoa.com

World War II Valor in the Pacific Monument: www.nps.gov/valr/index.htm

Ray's Kiawe Broiled Chicken: 808-479-9891

Matsumoto Shave Ice: matsumotoshaveice.com/

O'AHU, Hawaii — I'd finished researching the story that had brought me to the Hawaiian island of O'ahu and found myself with a full day blissfully unscheduled. After considering — and rejecting — the notion of spending the day lounging on the sands of Waikiki, I asked the concierge at The Modern Honolulu, where I was staying, for suggestions.

I'd come to Hawaii to research the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, the clunkily named memorial to those who fought in the Pacific War. You probably know it simply as Pearl Harbor.

After reliving the day “which shall live in infamy,” when planes from the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a sneak attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl and the Army airfields elsewhere on the island, I was in the mood for something a little lighter.

When I told the concierge I had a car, he said a drive to the island's North Shore was just the ticket and handed me a five-page packet of opinionated descriptions of what the area had to offer. There were too many to do them all, of course, so I made some difficult choices.

The next morning I got into my rental car and left bustling, cosmopolitan Honolulu, with its high-rise hotels, world-famous beaches and high-end shopping, and headed up the valley on Likelike Highway. The road takes you first through a virtual tunnel of lush vegetation, then into an actual tunnel drilled through Ko'olau mountain.

Once on the other side, it's as if you've Hot Tub Time Machined back to a simpler Hawaii of single-family homes and strip shopping centers where you can get McDonald's and KFC just like on the mainland. That it's all towered over by emerald-green mountains shrouded in high-level clouds gives the place an enchanting and otherworldly, yet still familiar, feel.

I continued on and soon left suburban Hawaii behind. I was headed to Kualoa Ranch in nearby Kaneohe and found myself on the winding, two-lane Kamehameha Highway that hugs the shore. At places the shoreline was rocky, waves crashing almost at the foot of the road. At others there were thin strips of beach. Homes were modest, and there were fields of crops. My impression that this must be what the entire island was once like was bolstered by the occasional hand-painted sign decrying possible development of the area. Like those who fly “Keep Austin Weird” flags, these folks do not want to see it become Honolulu North.

Kualoa is a 4,000-acre ranch established in 1850 when King Kamehameha III sold 622 acres to Dr. Gerritt P. Judd, a missionary physician who'd become his personal adviser. Through the years, Judd and his sons purchased more land, and the ranch has been at various times a sugar plantation, an auxiliary air strip for the U.S. military during World War II, a cattle ranch and a dramatic outdoor sound stage for TV and movie productions. In recent years, it has been transformed into a multifaceted tourist destination.

There's plenty to do there, and I chose to take a two-hour horseback tour deep into Ka'a'awa Valley, recognizable from the scene in “Jurassic Park” in which Sam Neal, Laura Dern and the children run from a herd of parasaurolophus and the TV show “Lost” where Hurley built his impromptu golf course.

There are also forests, long-abandoned WWII bunkers and spectacular views of the Kualoa Mountains and the ocean.

If horses aren't your thing, you can ride an all-terrain vehicle to the more remote reaches of the ranch, take a movie-site bus tour, or sail off the island's windward side on a private catamaran.

You could, in fact, spend all day on the ranch, but once I'd dismounted, there were other things on my mind: roasted chicken.

The information packet the concierge had given me raved about a place called Ray's Kiawe Broiled Chicken in the town of Haleiwa. “There is something to be said about a perfectly roasted chicken,” read the description. “We are talking about well cooked, but not charred skin covering perfectly white and consistently moist meat to the bone that is complemented by its seasoning.”

My mouth watering, I headed out on the 70-minute drive.

Haleiwa is a surfer town, the kind of throwback place where images of reggae artist Bob Marley grace both murals painted on the sides of buildings and T-shirts worn by young girls. You can't miss Ray's because it's near the center of town next to the Malama Market. It's not inside a building, however. Instead, the huli-huli-style chicken is char-broiled over an open pit rotisserie, rows of split full birds sizzling over hot charcoal. Other than a few outdoor chairs, however, it's a grab-and-go experience that's not to be missed.

While driving into town, I noticed a line of people snaking into a small, side-of-the-road grocery store. Intrigued, I later went to check it out and discovered I'd happened upon Matsumoto Shave Ice, a pidgin-English institution known worldwide for its Hawaiian version of what South Texans call raspas. Basically, shaved ice drenched in flavorings.

As I waited in line, I considered what flavor to get. The choices are overwhelming. Grape, strawberry and cherry I could understand. But others, including mizore, lychee and li hing mui, had me stumped.

In the end, I decided to go with the equivalent of the Combination Plate No. 1 and get the Matsumoto's, a combination of lemon, pineapple and coconut. After a wait of 30 minutes or so, and resisting the lure of the T-shirts and other souvenirs that fill the one-time grocery, I headed out to the street to partake in my first authentic shave ice.

It was, in a word, underwhelming. To my taste buds, at least, it was a sickeningly sweet concoction that I found hard to swallow — both literally and figuratively. Much like the raspas sold in the shadow of the Alamo, the flavorings left an unpleasantly sharp, almost chemical taste in the back of my throat.

Sure, most everyone else seemed to be enjoying theirs, and who am I to argue with the modest shop's booming success? But after three or four attempts (“Maybe it's the lemon I don't like. Let's try the pineapple.”) I gave up and surreptitiously dumped the rest of my shave ice in a nearby trash can.